Safemine, a worldwide leader in collision warning technology, is proud to announce to attend the 2011 SME show, taking place in Denver on 27 February – 3 March. The company can be found at booth #1739 and will be represented by Cyrille Sauvain.

Cyrille will be giving a talk on Wednesday, 2 March, from 3.45pm – 4.05pm in a session titled ‘Mining and exploration: safety technologies for safer mines’. His topic will be the improving operator performance through traffic awareness technology and is summarised in the paragraphs below:

SAFEmine’s traffic awareness technology was originally developed as a collision-warning system for aviation. With over 15,000 units installed in aircraft worldwide this technology has become a leader in traffic awareness and collision warning. SAFEmine has developed this technology further to suit the mining industry. Several open-pit mines worldwide are using or installing SAFEmine systems, supported by offices in US, Australia and Switzerland, or by one of many partners worldwide.

Results of recent research using SAFEmine technology in open-pit mines will be presented, based on typical trial setups before full-scale deployment. Units record all system events (for example alarms or traffic indications), operator actions and detailed data on movement of the vehicle as well as of vehicles near-by. The first phase of the trial records all above data without any information to the operator in order to establish a baseline for the second phase with display and all system functions enabled. The analysis of phase 1 versus phase 2 with operators, mine and safety managers shows improved operator behavior. It also highlights potential safety enhancements, as well as increases overall productivity.